1. Field of the Invention
The invention is generally directed to work distribution in a graphics pipeline. More particularly, the invention is directed to a scalable mechanism for distributing work among multiple primitive blocks in a graphics pipeline.
2. Background Art
Display images comprise thousands of dots, where each dot represents one of thousands or millions of colors. These dots are known as picture elements, or “pixels”. Each pixel has multiple attributes associated with it, such as, color and texture attributes. Those attributes are manipulated and processed before being rendered on a display screen of an electronic device.
Pixels form graphical objects. Example graphical objects include points, lines, polygons, and three-dimensional (3D) solid objects. Points, lines, and polygons represent rendering primitives which are the basis for most rendering instructions. More complex structures, such as 3D objects, are formed from a combination or a mesh of such primitives. To display a particular scene, the visible primitives associated with the scene are drawn individually by determining pixels that fall within the edges of the primitives, and obtaining the attributes of the primitives that correspond to each of those pixels.
Because there are thousands, if not millions of primitives, the inefficient processing of primitives reduces system performance when rendering complex images on a display screen. Conventional graphics systems process primitives serially or in a limited parallel way that cannot be scaled or expanded.